Points – another updated feature of Civil 3D 2008! Finally, we get some of the enhancements that we’ve been asking for…

First and foremost, points are individual objects now. Of course, they were before, but if you selected one point, the program selected all the points in that point group, causing a severe performance hit. Not anymore with Civil 3D 2008 – when you select a point, only that point is selected. But it’s what happens once you select that point that we see the major enhancements – click more to see what those enhancements are…

First, one of the big ones. You’ve wanted a way to specify a rotation for individual points for a while now, right? Well, your wish has been granted. We can now select a point, right click, and select ROTATE from the basic modify tools. This allows us to type in a rotation angle or just select it on screen with screen picks. Here’s a rotated point, just in case you haven’t seen one before:

Next, I want to look at one of these points in the Properties dialog box – but why? This never gave me much information before! Well, now it does. All point data can be found in the properties dialog box now – see below for an example:

Lastly, what happens if we list a point? Well, now that information shows up in the command line! Here’s an example:

Have fun!